Maize Maze Craze

Cornfield Labyrinth Tries The Patience While Testing Instincts For Pathfinding

October 17, 1999|By Arline and Sam Bleecker Special to the Sentinel

TITUSVILLE, N.J. - Over a loudspeaker, perched somewhere inconspicuously above a four-acre cornfield, Renee Moyer was informing the Punch Buggies, a father-and-son team, that they weren't quite as smart as the average lab mouse.

Renee is ``corn-mander in chief'' of Howell Living History Farm's corn maze, where you plunk down $6 for the privilege of getting lost for what you hope is just a few hours.

We never thought anyone willingly would want to mimic a lab mouse - or, in this case, a field mouse. But on this sunny Saturday afternoon, a few hundred corny day-trippers - including us - did.

And in case you have trouble following this story, not to worry. After all, we're talking a maze here - two miles of twisting, turning, dead-ended trails that, by day's end, felt like 200. And getting lost was, well, kind of the whole point.

A maze cut into a field of corn seemed the perfect outing for two people who had no particular direction in mind but wanted to be outdoors. We got more of both than we bargained for.

The Titusville maze is a gigantic depiction of Washington crossing the Delaware, after that famous 1851 painting by Emanuel Leutze. Though had Washington taken the same route we did through this historic New Jersey farmland, he probably still wouldn't know the Revolutionary War is over.

We arrived at about 1 p.m., parked our car in a grassy field, trekked up a dirt path to the admission tent, where a sign read ``Buy Your Ticket to Get Lost.''

Cute.

The ingredients for the day were simple: lots of drinking water, a flag of many colors, two watchtowers from where lookouts monitor participants' progress - or lack thereof, as the case may be - a stubby pencil and a blank map.

A blank map?

``Isn't that an oxymoron?'' we asked Russ, the portly volunteer who gave us our marching orders, so to speak.

Russ explained the deal: Ten mailboxes were scattered strategically - in no particular order - within the maze. Each held one piece of the puzzle. Tape all 10 pieces onto the appropriate blank space on your map and, voila, you've done the maze!

OK. Sounds easy.

``Your choices [of pathways) will determine how long you remain in the maze,'' Russ noted with gleeful understatement. The average time is about 45 minutes, and ``most everyone '' completes the maze, he said. Which, of course, begged the question: Where are the ones who didn't?

Before heading into the corn maze, each team selects a brightly colored flag, to be hoisted high. Ours was half passion purple, half cherry red, fluttering on a long white pole as flexible as a fishing rod.

Finally, each ``team'' registers a nickname for the day, yielding such oddities as ``Eat More Chicken'' and ``Kernel Sanders.'' Though the title for the day's best name was no contest: ``Radioactive Cow Udders.''

These oddball monikers would sound especially weird when Renee referred to them over the loudspeaker, as in: ``Corn-gratulations Eat More Chicken for finding mailbox No. 4!''

We chose ``Children of the Corn'' as our handle, and our circuit began.

We were officially clocked in at 1:34 p.m.

A small group ahead of us headed right. We went left.

First stop: dead end.

Already, we wished we had brought a compass.

Each little group moved through the maze independently - going hither and yon, this way and that, flags bobbing up above the corn.

Aw, shucks. We zigged again when we should have zagged.

It wasn't long before we were willing to ditch Washington's quest for independence and just quest for a negotiable route.

You can't navigate the maze by sight. Even though the cornstalks were only 5 feet tall because of drought, that didn't make negotiating the maze any easier.

You might glimpse mailbox No. 7 from here, but getting there is the problem.

Progress is more by happenstance. When we accidentally hit upon our first mailbox and pasted the piece onto our map, we tried to figure out where we were and where we could go from there. Like just about everybody else, though, we weren't very successful.

After an hour, with only three mailboxes under our belt, we felt pretty stupid. Even our flag was flagging.

We're not quite sure when it all turned from a care-free outing into something resembling D-Day. Groups reconnoitered to commiserate, and at some point beating the maze became a matter of honor. In the eagerness of one of us (think male ego) to prove the map incorrect, we twice went in a circle ... we think. And we got so excited at finding mailbox No. 6 that we accidentally left our flag at the spot. Now, how the heck do we find that mailbox again?

We hadn't a clue if we retrod the same path. Or, if so, how many times.

This maze, we were told, pays homage to New Jersey's role in the fight for freedom.

Because we never saw anything but corn, to us it mainly depicted the Garden State's contribution to farming.